


Du Seigneur

by QuinFirefrorefiddle



Category: Merlin (BBC)
Genre: F/M, Father-Son Relationship, Hurt/Comfort, Minor Character Death, Mistress, straight!Arthur
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-04-03
Updated: 2010-04-03
Packaged: 2017-10-08 16:29:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,993
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/77533
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/QuinFirefrorefiddle/pseuds/QuinFirefrorefiddle
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Uther told Arthur that he'd be allowed to marry Gwen over his dead body.  Very well- what was Arthur to do with himself in the meantime?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Many thanks to florahart for looking this over! Just some light fluff.

It all started with a negotiation in a sheep pasture, of all places, between a crown prince and a six-months-widowed peasant. He couldn't marry the woman he wanted, yet, and Nora needed a new home, now that her parents were dead as well, and she couldn't stomach marrying any of the men of her own village. They surprised each other by managing to get along personally, which was a bonus.

 

The negotiations had been short. She'd leave when he married or when he tired of her. He'd provide her with a simple living, afterward, and wouldn't enter her life again.

 

And they would not love each other. Not ever.

 

She heard quite a bit about Gwen- from him, from Merlin, from seeing Gwen around occasionally, though she was usually careful to avoid her. Arthur, restrained by his ingrained manners, only ever asked her about her husband the once.

 

“Nora, what was he like?” Whispered into her ear one night, just as her breathing was getting back to normal.

 

She wouldn't have answered- it wasn't the kind of thing a man should ask a woman, even if he was the crown prince and she was his mistress- except that she'd rarely ever heard that note in his voice. The one that meant uncertainty, that sounded like he was trying out a new horse and wasn't sure of his seat yet.

 

But she also wasn't stupid enough to answer unthinkingly. So she took a deep breath, and rolled over to face him, straightening the bedclothes as she went. She knew he loved it when she did that- her own patterns of neatness which he cheerfully assumed were a nod to his status and comfort. The longer she stayed with him, the more true it became- the comfort part, not the status- so she hadn't corrected him.

 

“He was... kind. Careful, thoughtful of others. Barely ever said a word in anger in his life, but most people liked him too much to walk all over him for it. A little clumsy. He... when _you_ smile, it's like... the sunlight breaking through the clouds after a long dreary day. When _he_ smiled... it was like coming inside to a warm fire in winter.”

 

“You still miss him.”

 

“Yes.”

 

He raised his hand slowly and smoothed a lock of hair back from her forehead. “You don't love me.”

 

“No, Arthur.”

 

“Good.” And he grinned a bit, and tugged her closer. And she went, and they fell asleep like that, curled up like kittens.

 

*

  
Three years later, just after his father died, he married Gwen in a ceremony with all of Camelot in attendance. The party afterward became the stuff of legend, and Arthur spent almost a month's revenue to pay for feeding everyone who came, peasant to noble and back again.

 

Nora didn't see any of it, though she heard the stories, after. He'd set her up in a cottage of her own, in a village on the other side of the city from the one where she'd been born, just as she'd asked. She stayed out of Camelot entirely for the next seven years, and any time it was rumored he'd be coming to her village, she found a reason to leave for a little while.

 

Her life was nothing like she'd planned it as a child- no children of her own, no husband- but as the seasons passed, she found it was exactly what she wanted. Quiet, pleasant, _safe_.

 

*

 

Until one cold winter's day when a man wearing a dark cloak appeared at her door, while she was teaching a sewing lesson. He had to remove his cloak and say her name twice before she recognized him, she had put that time of her life so thoroughly out of her mind. “Merlin?”

 

“He needs you, Nora. Will you come?” Merlin had always looked tired, way back when, but now he looked _haggard_, and too thin. She sent the children away.

 

“What happened?” And he told her. Gwen's betrayal, Lancelot's rescue, and Arthur hadn't slept in three days and was running his knights ragged preparing to go after them.

 

Nora had heard what Arthur had been like after Morgana's betrayal. She hadn't been there when his father died- not for more than a few days- because that meant Arthur could finally marry Gwen, and he'd sent her away as they'd planned out years beforehand. Losing Gwen now meant that all he had left was Merlin.

 

“But the agreement?”

 

“He's asked for you.” And several merry hells, that was a surprise.

 

“Merlin, I can't replace her. I was never what Gwen was to him.”

 

“He asked for you as his _friend_, Nora.”

 

And the relief on Merlin's face when she agreed to go was more worrisome than the pain that had been there earlier.

 

*

 

Standing on the top of a castle wall on a cold winter's day was windy, and freezing, and not at all romantic. All of which presumably had to do with why Arthur was here in the first place.

 

“Sire?”

 

His head dropped for a moment, and then he turned to face her. “Arthur, surely.”

 

She nodded. “Arthur.”

 

They stood there a few moments, each getting used to the way the other looked now. He was certainly noticing the lines on her face and the way her figure had changed now that the flush of youth was gone. She found she didn't really like the beard very much, at all.

 

Finally he spoke. “You don't love me, do you?”

 

“No, Arthur.” He nodded, and the beard meant she couldn't tell if that was resignation on his face. “But I have missed you, my friend.”

 

And she knew it was those last two words that made him smile- like the sun breaking through stubborn clouds- and open his arms to her.

 

He didn't have to tug, this time. She went.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Nora and King Uther.

The first time Nora remembered seeing Uther Pendragon, she was perhaps four winters old, and huddling in her mother's skirts in their doorway, her mother's hand clasped tight on her shoulder. Her father was several steps in front of them, at the edge of the town square proper, where he could hear the king's voice better.

 

The king's decree banishing magic and all who would use it had come a few winters before she was born, and had changed her mother's life quite materially, as midwife to the village. Before, her mother had boasted a nine of ten rate for completely successful births due to her assistance- no injury to the child or mother due to the process. That dropped noticeably, afterward.

 

That was the last time that the King accompanied his guard on the rounds to hunt sorcerers out of the villages. Her father never quite paid the same attention afterward, she knew- he no longer stood at the square when the guard came on its own. Her mother, however, remained wary. An accusation of sorcery was easy enough to prove against anyone who knew medicine, and women had a harder time defending themselves. All it would take, her mother knew, was one botched birth and an angry, vindictive father.

 

Once she could be trusted alone in the forest, her mother sent her out berry-gathering whenever the guard came around again. She didn't argue.

 

*

 

The second time she saw King Uther Pendragon, she barely got a glimpse of him before sinking into the deepest curtsy she could manage, having never tried one before. Arthur was next to her, a steadying hand below her elbow which unobtrusively helped her rise when the King bade her to.

 

The day before, she'd been tending her brother's sheep in the pasture when a stranger, blond and well-fed, had approached her wearing the crest of Camelot. This morning, she stood at his side, in the throne chamber of the King.

 

Her mother was dead, and had refused to teach her daughter any of her arts in the hope it would keep her safe from unfounded accusations. She had no reason to fear the King on that basis any longer. And still, her bone-deep terror of him had almost led her to refuse the Prince's offer the day before.

 

Her terror of starvation had just barely won that contest.

 

The King, apparently conscious of her distraction, spoke mostly to Arthur. He asked her only two questions- one, that she was certain she was not already with child, and the second, of her loyalty. He made a pleased hum to her answer to the first question.

 

Her answer to the second question got her a long stare. Arthur had told her, before they entered, to simply be absolutely honest- no good could come of deception at that point. So she had answered the King honestly. “I am loyal to Prince Arthur, sire.”

 

The King seemed less than completely pleased with that, but he did not question her again. She and Arthur left, shortly after.

 

Arthur told her a story over the midday meal, that same day, of a time he had become lost in the lower city as a small child, and of his father's joy at finding him again. That afternoon, Merlin took her to the jeweler to have her handflower made, the mark of her service. His impressions of the King giving Arthur instructions on how to choose a mistress from the villages actually made her laugh aloud. Soon it was finished; a ring each around the left fore- and ring-finger, attached by tiny chains to a bracelet, all silver and the finest thing she'd ever worn; and Merlin took her back to the castle.

 

She heard those stories, and remembered and took comfort from them- but she would never be quite as comfortable in the presence of the King as the others in the castle.

 

*

 

The last time she saw King Uther Pendragon, it was raining. The cloudburst had caught her in the far reaches of the outer kitchen gardens, where she liked to walk away from the eyes of visiting nobility. So she came in the doorway at a full-tilt run, and very nearly collided with Gaius.

 

When she realized he had only steadied her near-fall with his left arm because his right was supporting the King, she nearly fell to the ground despite his help.

 

The King was aging quickly, though his mind and voice were sharp as ever. Arthur had been taking on more responsibility, attending extra council meetings and overseeing the castle's workings more closely. Father and son rarely fell into each others' orbits, then, though that had already been true for well over a year.

 

Occasionally, though, Gaius would pry himself from his workbench and accompany the King on his walks. Nora and the rest of the castle had been quietly stunned by the careful and gentle touch Gaius had with the King, so different from his normal, acerbic nature.

 

The King noticed her- likely only because of her clumsiness- and sharpened, quickly. “You, there. You're Arthur's, aren't you?”

 

She wasn't certain if it was tact or simple bluntness that made him leave off what she was to Arthur, but his version was true enough, in any case. That was what her handflower meant. “Yes, sire.”

 

“You haven't done anything ridiculous like falling in love with him, have you?”

 

She blinked, twice. That was... unexpected. “No, sire.”

 

“Good.” He _hrrumphed_ to himself once or twice. “Young widows are best for that kind of thing, my father always said. He was right, too. You aren't going to give Arthur any trouble, are you?”

 

“No, sire.”

 

“See that you don't.” He glanced at Gaius. “See that she doesn't.”

 

Gaius' quiet, “Yes, sire,” was lost on her as they finally passed by. She began to shake, slightly.

 

Three days later, the King was dead. Long live the King.


End file.
